Field
Embodiments provided herein generally relate to linking electronic items into matters, and particularly to linking electronic legal documents and other legal and non-legal electronic data.
Technical Background
As electronic systems retrieve and store electronic documents for searching, many electronic documents pertaining to an event (such as a legal matter) may be obtained from a plurality of different sources. Additionally, as each of the sources may organize and/or label their documents differently, the electronic systems that retrieve these documents may be unable to associate documents from different sources to the common event. Accordingly, when attempting to organize the documents for later indexing, there may be no indicated relation of the documents. Thus, a user who attempts to locate all documents in the event may be forced to independently search for each document.
More specifically, many current electronic research systems may be configured to acquire electronic versions of legal documents from a plurality of sources. While one document may be retrieved from a court reporter, other documents may be received via public access to court electronic records (PACER) and/or from other sources. Consequently, the documents retrieved may be formatted in such a way that one cannot easily determine whether the documents are part of a common legal matter or whether they are unrelated. As such, in many current solutions, if an end-user of the electronic research system is searching for a complaint and a brief associated with that legal dispute, the search may become cumbersome due to the fact that two independent searches must be performed.